


In the darkest corner of the room are your pale hands

by hongmunmu



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/F, Maybe - Freeform, Relationship Study, morriana, sadfic, timelapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thorned rose and a nightingale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the darkest corner of the room are your pale hands

In the beginning Morrigan was barely a shadow in the corner of the camp, and Leliana was an obtrusive birdsong that burned brighter than the fire behind her. Her infernal lute twanged chords of larks and Morrigan cursed them so, as she did any noise or music which would have the audacity to speak over Leliana’s voice. For Morrigan’s own experience of song was so very different – the haggard croak of an old, old woman who hummed the words of a creaking homeland and a deep, dark forest. In the Korcari Wilds’ mother tongue. The melodic harpy tunes sang by Leliana’s molten Orlesian voice paled in comparison, and yet Morrigan could not ignore them. Try as she might.

Leliana’s sweet and lilting songs were not forgettable for Morrigan had so little to compare them with.

So foreign was the concept of a tavernsong, a chorus – nay, even a lullaby –

And so she listened to Leliana’s voice with intrigue, and unnatural, bitter love.

And oft in her walks in the Fade, she would hear some Orlesian ballad lingering in the heavy air, little pieces of a song that she could never truly reach. The Chasind toads would drown out the serenade of red-headed sweethearts.

She envied Leliana in some ways, with her songs and her optimism and her golden, singing childhood. But a happy house cat is doomed to become fat on its shelter and pampering, she reminded herself, a caged and groomed pet, never knowing what lay outside the village or the pleasure of a rat-gut on its tongue. Bones between teeth as it was born to do. She wanted Leliana to break.

Of course, Morrigan knew little of the truth – of Leliana’s life of loss and heartbreak and torture. Indeed, one might even have said _Morrigan_ was the more sheltered of the two, not Leliana. For Morrigan had never had anything in her life, save her mother, and her magic, and the endless Wilds. And the trees were her friends and the animals her guardians, but a ram cannot break a girl’s heart, and an oak is not capable of betrayal. What did Morrigan know of the world? What did Morrigan know of love, to write it off so? Who could envy a life so controlled by an old woman, shrouded in secrecy and limits?  Her knowledge was of skinning rabbits and building huts, and to Leliana, this was shelter. To never make a hard decision, to leave a friend behind, to leave yourself behind. To find faith and love and reasons to remain. For Leliana was not the fat, docile house cat Morrigan would believe she was – but a mouser, clawed and intent, comfortable in the bounds of what territory was relevant to her – surviving, instead of running away from it all. She faced her fears and feelings. She obeyed nothing and held no code.

Leliana had been hurt and scorned by witches among women before, and this made her strong. Morrigan hurt her not. Her shield was in her songs, and the Maker.

***

They were both wrong about each other, as it happened, yet it seemed this did not matter in the long course of things. Morrigan vanished, as good as her word; they never exchanged a farewell. Indeed Morrigan did not feel it necessary, for she had a certainty Leliana would not fade into the shadows. Ten long years passed since the fifth Blight. Morrigan took it upon herself to check in on the Chantry sister, in the form of a bird at times, or an August ram; as she did with the newly appointed King of Ferelden – fool though he may be. And once a year, she took it upon herself to clear the dust and droppings and disrespectful messages from her Warden’s grave. Though in the time that passed, Morrigan came to realise Leliana no longer sang her cheery folk tales, and her voice no longer rang clear like a bell. Leliana had become the vessel for solemn chantry hymns, and sang prayers, and occasionally – when she was in private, alone, feeling sentimental – a wistful hum, accompanied by a single shed tear, of a tune Morrigan had heard once before, around a burning fire, as a shadow in the corner of the camp…

If Leliana hadn’t known that crows could shed tears, she hid it well. It was the first eye contact they made in seven years.

Leliana hadn’t known that crow was Morrigan, and perhaps Morrigan didn’t either. For the time she spent as a crow, she was a crow, not a grieving Witch of the Wilds, lost in a moment of musical reminiscence. But the tune hurt her little crow’s heart, nevertheless.

***

Upon reunion no immediate reaction or special greetings were exchanged – if either were surprised in the first place. Leliana handled the presence of the Inquisition’s newest member with a business-like coldness, dismissive of the fact that she and Morrigan had had any form of past relationship beyond mild acquaintance and mutual dislike. Morrigan on the other hand approached it with a light amusement, as though it were some inside joke between her and Leliana, leaving the other key members of the Inquisition baffled.

Though eventually, upon the conclusion of a war meeting, they would find themselves lingering until Cullen, Josephine and the Inquisitor had all excused themselves. Most of these times, no words were exchanged between the two of them in private, nothing more than a knowing look, or a slight brush of the hand. One holding the door open for the other. The gestures were not huge but they indicated _something_ – some form of reconciliation. Morrigan watched Leliana from her iron-wrought bench, as the red-head crossed the gardens in the evenings, when she thought she was alone, for a moment of weakness in the chapel. Morrigan offered no comfort, only presence. _I am here_ , it said. _Acknowledge me._

She did, eventually. Not directly, of course – such was not Leliana’s fashion – but after her fall in the battle, Morrigan found a certain ash-lilac headscarf wrapped around her wound, bound with a small Chantry medallion.

And much, much later, on the final night following the victory against Corypheus, Morrigan left her bed and stepped lightly down Skyhold’s warm stone corridors. Leliana followed her wordlessly like a shadow, and watched as she changed shape and took flight from the end of the bridge. 


End file.
